Taxation is a problem.
Regulation is a problem.
Unions are a problem.
Off-shoring jobs is a problem.
But the bottomline is that in a global economy, machines will do a lot of the productive work, and the manual input that is required will be paid at the level required to support a guy in China who receives no benefits and has a life expectancy of 50.
You cannot maintain a nice suburban American lifestyle in a world where the global economy holds sway. Sure, some people will hold on to that dream, but most Americans will live like serfs.
Fiddling with taxes, regulations, tariffs, off-shoring, or unions will not really alter the new reality. Most humans are going to live in a society in which their labor is really not valued — so how will they survive? The current answer is: Socialism and benefits from the government. What we need is a better answer than that, and so far, I really don’t think anyone has a better answer. And that totally sucks.
The better answer may well be to get along without all the crap that “a nice suburban life” typically involves. The best times in my life have involved a banjo and a half pint of whiskey along with a few friends and a place to dance. I would not trade those experiences for a bass boat, tickets to a NASCAR race, a 374 inch flat screen TV with unlimited programming, and a 400 HP SUV. Nor will I try to make that trade in the future. The banjo cost $700 ten years ago and the cost of the whiskey varies, but I can afford it.
To each his own, but we all have options if we will look for them.
Might add abortion to that list of problems—we have killed of millions of prospective future citizens in the US alone.
I hear what you’re saying and am sympathetic to your argument, but it reminds me of someone analyzing a bumble bee and concluding that it can’t fly. Well, somehow it does fly. Likewise mechanization has been increasing for the last 200 years and yet we’re not living like serfs. In fact the quality of life for the average Joe has been improving and will probably continue to improve. The trend line is up. If mechanization led to serfdom then we would be closer to serfdom now than we were before mechanization. But we’re not, so there’s obviously something going on — something big — that your analysis doesn’t take into account. There’s some subtle but pivotal misconception buried in there somewhere. I’m not sure what it is exactly (I wish I did) but it’s there.
Americans have been consuming more than we produce for about the last forty years. Foreigners have many more claims on the production of relatively fewer, and in many ways relatively less productive, Americans, who will have fewer resources to with which to “honor” the claims of retiring Americans and provide for the their families.
Government profligacy is certainly in part to blame, but so is an enormous and ineffective “educational” bureaucracy, which devours ever more resources and produces fewer and shoddier outputs.